Finally, I want to set some expectations for 2022 OPL. I’m pretty happy with how 2021 OPL has turned out - it has caused some teams to make some tough decisions, it has generated a lot of excitement, and I think long-term it is going to help incentivize finishing higher in home leagues. The only concern from my perspective has been the manipulation of the suspended list, 60-day IL, and COVID-IL statuses for roster spots. The handling of these statuses will change ahead of 2022 OPL, and I’ll have more details about this after this MLB season is over.
Glad to see these are being addressed, I’d add salary manipulation as an area of concern. Outliers are scary, and its pretty hard to prevent/identify a group effort (a league or certain owners) without some degree of control over how much a team can add.
Over the course of my league, the most controversial trades have always been the ones that include disparate salary swaps.
My recommendation would be to put a standard cap on loans, and make it optional for a league to have no cap (but they can’t enter OPL). Possibly via team-to-team caps on salary per trade and # of trades cumulatively between two teams (or maybe a cooldown timer). Maybe OPL teams have a shortened trade window? Or, maybe OPL entries don’t get to trade at all? Or maybe just have a max loan amount to stay eligible. Anything would be better than seeing a couple teams (or the winner… yuck) competing due to a competitive advantage in their league, that others cannot enjoy.
I started out opposed to any salary caps. A couple trades over the past few years changed my mind.
Less due to the effect of the trade and more due to the confusion/frustration they created, and the owners we lost.
Aggressive traders will always be able to find a loophole and prey on green Otto owners.
These are non-starters for a variety of reasons and there won’t be any kinds of trade or loan caps in 2022 OPL. Putting OPL teams on a different economic standard than other Ottoneu teams is well outside the goals of OPL.
Just the on-going conversation about capping trade loans which I’m sure you can find if you search the forums. Or in Slack or whatever.
My league’s been around since 2005. It is not full of sharks. We had a brief problem with large loans and the market in the league corrected. That was like, 10 years ago. I fully do not believe in capping loans or making artificial trade restrictions.
I’ll write this out a bit more actually, because it’s worth clarifying:
I think OPL is actually precisely a corrective measure against huge lopsided trades. OPL teams going forward will only be top-6 teams in their Fantasy Baseball leagues. The prize incentives (namely the t-shirt let’s be honest) and general fun of OPL is going to be a draw for those top 6 teams. In most leagues, this will add buyers, especially around the roster snapshot deadlines. This is added leverage for sellers, which is something I really wanted to add via this contest.
I actually wrote this in Slack and I should share it here:
the goals of OPL are to:
incentivize finishing 4th through 6th
incentivize good teams to stay engaged by getting 10% better which in turn
makes it easier for 7-12 to acquire FV and rebuild
it sounds like it is working pretty well
being good enough to win your league isn’t enough, so you’re giving up FV in order to get into that OPL tourney and that benefits non-OPL teams in your home league. you just have to expand the timeline to like 10 months instead of 3 months
I don’t think there needs to be trade / loan caps because I think the dynamic of OPL, especially in 2022 and beyond, will greatly affect how top teams trade in their home leagues with another prize to chase beyond just their home league.
I agree, or used to agree, but OPL is a different beast altogether. In OPL your league doesn’t matter, its everyone else leagues (impossible to follow everything) that do. Thanks for making a thread out of this!
There are a few teams with crazy salaries this season, and they are going to be tough to beat. They are achieving this outside other OPL players control, and also outside the realm of possibility for many participants, depending on league composition.
Trades where folks send marginal prospects or replacement level talent (zero value in OPL) for high priced underperformers, who then get cut and provide massive salary benefits to OPL participants is an issue. It will be a bigger issue next year.
Using the highest salaried OPL entry as an example, all their trades in the past month received 10-12 abstains. By all appearances, most in that league care very little about the trades currently taking place. The OPL entrant has a +1200 points lead, and probably has the title wrapped up already. Those trades have very little relevance towards that league, and huge significance towards other OPL participants.
I think most of this is steeped in 2021 OPL where there was no qualification requirements and a lot of teams threw themselves at the contest in the first 5 days of it being available out of excitement. I think the dynamic will be very different when some of these leagues have 2 solid OPL teams in them, especially given how much people have learned about best ball and how OPL works in 2021.
I obviously cannot guarantee the incentives in place will play out the way I picture them, but again, they are explicitly the purpose of OPL and if they don’t work then instead of making up new rules for OPL teams, OPL will probably go away.
Perish the thought! It’s going to be better next year. Lots of lessons learned all around. And the longer it sticks the deeper the rewards for the non-entries too as they improve from moves downstream of their OPL competition. It’s genius and unstoppable!!